NCA Logistics: (Pt. II) How Much Prep Time?
Hello NCA Candidates! As we embark on a new year, I’ve gotten a lot of questions from new NCA Candidates around the logistics of planning their exam sittings and allocating study time. While I’ve previously outlined how to study smart in my Avoiding Information Overload post and what subjects to take together in this post, I thought I’d take a few steps back and discuss planning basics.
In the first part of this series, I outlined how to work out how many exams you should do per sitting. If you missed that post, you can re-visit it here. In today’s post, I’ll go over how much time you should take to prepare for each sitting, and to use your time efficiently.
Part II: How Much Time Do I Need to Prepare and How do I Prepare Efficiently?
The answer to this question depends on how you intend to study and your personal study habits. If you are someone who needs to read EVERYTHING and make your own notes then you will need more time. If you are someone who is more comfortable with skimming and relying on third-party notes, then you can dedicate less time per exam (though do make sure your third-party notes come from a reliable source!).
For two of my exams, I started from scratch because I could not source notes. I bought the textbooks, followed the syllabus, and made my own notes. It took me about five weeks of studying after work and on weekend (e.g. 40hrs / week) to complete each course and feel prepared for the exam.
For my other five exams, I relied nearly exclusively on NCA Tutor™ notes; as I wrote my exams in the UK and textbooks were very difficult to source, I didn’t have a choice nor did I have the time to spend 5 weeks per subject if I wanted to get my NCAs completed before the next round of articling applications. The notes worked very well for me and cut my study time down to about 1.2 weeks per course (at 40 hrs / week).
Generally, I spent 5 days reading through a printed copy of the notes from start to finish, marking and highlighting them as necessary. Sometimes, I’d have to do a bit of extra reading or find lectures on YouTube to watch for topics or concepts I didn’t understand. But, for the most part I stuck to the notes themselves. I would then put that subject aside and read through the notes for my other exams. This activity would generally conclude the week before NCA exam week (e.g. 3 weeks for a 3-exam sitting), leaving me one full week to revise and refresh myself on each topic.
During this revision week I would make quick-reference notes and organize my materials to bring into the exam with me. The key activity for this week was ensuring I understood all the concepts and knew how to find my materials in the exam. More details on that activity can be found on my other blog here.
Hopefully you’ve found this outline of my personal experience and study habits useful! Whatever you decide to do, make sure you are meeting your unique study habits. Use your past law school experience as a guide for what does and doesn’t work for you!
Happy Studying!
Tiffany
Tiffany is an LLM candidate at NYU Law. and a regular blogger for NCA Tutor™.